After the War
by Rosaliebyrd13
Summary: The war is over. The light has won. Dark creatures still roam though. One call in the night brings Hermione back to where it all began, and a new war is born. A war against the Supernatural. And she won't rest until it is finished. For good this time.
1. Dead Fathers

It is two in the morning when the phone rings. The sound is foreign at first; she has only heard that phone ring maybe twice, and that was years ago. She nearly can't find it in time because it's so buried beneath crap in her bedside drawer. But she does find the cell phone, and she does answer it.

"Hello?"

"Hello, may I speak to a Miss Hermione Granger please?" American accent, the timbre of a middle-aged woman worked to the bone. Hermione can think of no one she knows that fits that description.

"This is she. May I ask who's calling?"

"Miss Granger, this is Nancy Babbit at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in Hunt County—"

"Hunt county?"

"Yes, Miss Granger, Hunt County. In Missouri."

"Missouri?"

"Yes. Now Miss Granger, your father is John Winchester, correct?

Silence, because she can't deny it.

"Were you aware of your father's current situation?"

"situation." She is incapable of uttering anything but what was last said by the nurse. She knows nothing about her father's situation. She wishes that she did.

"Miss Granger your father was in a very bad car accident. When he was first brought in he was treated for very minor injuries and his prognosis was entirely positive, but about two hours ago he suffered severe cardiac arrest—"

"severe cardiac…" She doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand. What she wants to do is hand the phone off to someone else so that she can curl into a ball and cry. But there is nobody to take the phone. There is no one else for Nancy Babbit to speak to. So she does exactly what she's become good at ever since the war began. She tells herself to _pull it together_. Details first, emotions can wait.

"Miss Granger your father has passed away. I'm sorry for your loss." Nancy Babbit sounds sorry to have to be the one on the phone.

"What needs to be done?" _Do what needs to be done. Break down later._

"Well Miss Granger, your father did leave the hospital with very specific instructions. You are the only person that we are allowed to release the body and affects to. This means that you will need to come to the hospital to sign papers and you will need to make arrangements for your father's remains. Now, I can set you up with several highly recommended funeral homes if you—"

"No. No thank you. When will you be expecting me?"

"You can drop in any time and we can scrape together all of the details then."

"Right. Thank you." She hangs up the phone before she has to listen to that woman any more. And when the phone is put safely back in its drawer and there's no one left to hold herself together for, Hermione Granger curls in on herself and tries her very hardest to weep for her lost father.

^^^AFTER THE WAR^^^

Ron Weasley finds her exactly this way almost three hours later when he gets off of his shift. Neither of them says anything to the other. He knows the look on her face, knows that it's covering up heartache. This is the look she gets when she thinks about the war, about the past. This is the look that says she's thinking about all of the people she'll never see again. Ron Weasley knows this look; it's a look he has on his face most nights. So instead of pestering her for details he sheds his uniform and crawls in next to her, wraps his entire body around hers and holds her as if he's holding the pieces of the world together. His world. She is his world and he will never let her go.

Finally she whispers to him, "My father is dead."

And he doesn't say a thing back, just waits for her plan. There is always a plan, this time is no different.

"My father is dead and I need to go to America to collect his body."

"When do we leave?"

(((AFTER THE WAR)))

It is nearly four hours later that they are ready to go. Harry sits sleepily at the breakfast table, called home early from what would have been a 36 hour shift patrolling the streets. Two years after the war and the Order is still sending armed patrols out at all hours of the day and night. He can't complain though. He'll do whatever it takes to keep history from repeating itself.

Before him stand Ron and Hermione. "We'll be back as soon as we can."

He already knows this.

"Owl us every day."

He'd already planned on it.

"We love you."

He knew that too, but it's still nice to hear it. "I love you both."

For years now they have lived together, apart from everybody else, creating their own little family. Connected by more than blood. The ridges in their hands fit each other and their feet fall in in rhythm. This is how it has always been and this is how it will always be.

Now as Hermione and Ron grip each other tight, prepare to leave their brother, they can't help but feel anxious. Seconds later though a hook is pulling them out of the kitchen of Grimauld Place and they are ripping through the air, spinning crazily towards Hunt County in Missouri. She grips his hand and he grips back and their wedding bands, simple and thin, clank together and mold themselves around each other.

%%%AFTER THE WAR%%%

Hermione does not want to deal with the nurse at the front desk. This one is named Lavirne and she talks about Jesus and after a few seconds Hermione finds herself so ridiculously frustrated that she walks away, lets Ron take over.

She perches on the edge of a vinyl chair and lets her head sink into her hands until she is pulling at curls, trying to wake herself up. _Focus. Focus_. Minutes later Ron walks back to her, clutching a clipboard and a pile of papers. There's somewhere the nurses want them to go to fill them out. A private waiting room for the bereaved. Briefly Hermione wonders if the muggles think bereavement is catching.

Back in the newer, smaller waiting room they sit together in the corner. No one else is in the waiting room and it is quiet, the kind of quiet that makes whispered words sound like hissing shouts. Ron holds Hermione's hand as she carefully reads through all the papers and signs on the pages with sticky notes. He wishes he could do this for her, keep her away from all the cold hospital talk because this is something very hot and real. He's not so good with the legal jargon though, and she deals with it every day. He settles for a hand on her knee. That seems to help.

The more of the papers Hermione signs the hotter the room gets. This is only the second Muggle hospital she has been in and she can't remember what the other was like. St. Mungo's is always freezing though, she remembers that. She sheds her jacket moments before the last paper is signed, sighing as the hospital air raises gooseflesh on her arms.

"Miss Granger?" The voice comes from the other side of the room: a young man with sandy hair and wire glasses.

She looks up in response, and Ron tightens his grip on her waist. This is when she remembers what she's forgotten to tell all of the other hospital personnel she's talked to. "It's Hermione Weasley actually."

The sandy haired man straightens his glasses and approaches. And then says something completely unexpected. "I'm Doctor Benjamin Creevy, the doctor in charge of your father's case. I am so… sorry." His shoulders slump and he sits down in a chair across from them.

Ron and Hermione are still hearing what was said moments ago though. "Are you of any relation to Collin and Dennis?" Collin is one of the faces she sees in the middle of the night when she can't sleep and she can't stop thinking. _Collin you brave, brave, stupidly brave boy._ She desperately wants this young man to say _no, never heard of the boys. _But he looks just like the Creevy brothers.

"My brothers, why?"

"We were at school together." It's Ron that says it, because at the moment Hermione is two years ago in a castle, watching Collin's body being carried away by Oliver Wood.

The young doctor starts, and then re-checks his charts. Then, "You were at his funeral. I remember. The three of you sat in the back and at the very end you hugged my mother and father. I saw you cry for him." And that is the miracle Benjamin Creevy can see: that three of the greatest wizards and witch of all time would cry for his mudblood little brother.

"Collin was an amazing boy." Hermione speaks now. She has to tell Benjamin that she's sorry she ever thought his brother was annoying. She has to let him know that his little brother was the bravest. But she can't say anymore before her throat closes up.

"Yeah, well." Pause "From what I hear there were a lot of amazing people there that day." He takes off his glasses and polishes them, squinting in a different direction. "I really am sorry about your father Miss Gran- ah Weasley."

"Is there anything more I should be doing?"

"We have a box with the things he was brought in with. It's not much, but we weren't able legally to turn it over to your brothers—"

"Brothers?"

"Uhh Yes" another glance at the charts, "Samuel and Dean Winchester. They were causing a ruckus earlier when they found out they weren't allowed to take the body."

"Ahh." It is a short sound, one that is often used to convey understanding, but from Hermione Weasley nee Granger-once-Winchester it is a sort of hurt sound. A hurt from long ago being stirred around.

"The vehicle has already been towed by a family friend, so you won't need to worry about that. Messers Winchester have already made it clear that they have made funeral arrangements. Really, you just needed to sign all the papers and escort him from the premises." He waits for her to say something and then, "If you would like to view the body, I can take you to see him."

She breathes in and stands to follow him from the room. Hermione doesn't really notice the lost look on Benjamin Creevy's face as they walk side by side down the corridor to her father's hospital room. Ron sees it though, and he knows that look as well. "Benjamin, perhaps we could all meet for dinner together somewhere. Talk about Collin and what he was like at school."

"That would be… good."

###AFTER THE WAR###

The room is quiet and white. Very very white. In a bed in the center of the room is a man, hollow and pale, who is not hooked up to any machines. The staff has cleaned him up since the code hours ago. They've clothed him and taken away all of the equipment so that he looks… better. Hermione muses to herself that it's the calmest she's ever seen him.

Ron seats himself on the empty bed in the room. He's tired: about to fall asleep, half delusional, but he can stay awake for a bit longer. He's gotten used to having less sleep since the war. He watches his wife seat herself carefully in a plastic chair next to the bed and he worries for her. Because none of them have been quite right since the war and now her father is dead and her other parents are dead too and this was the father who had been so horrible to her when she was younger in the first place. Ron watches Hermione and he remembers eleven-year-old her who came to school lonely and trying to prove herself. And he remembers thirteen-year-old Hermione who helped a convicted murderer escape from death and he remembers how she helped teach the DA how to defend themselves and he remembers first loving her in fourth year when she kissed the quidditch player he had always idolized. He remembers walking away from her cries in the middle of a forest when they were seventeen and he remembers feeling so _ashamed_ of himself and missing her more than he missed his mother's cooking. And then coming back, when she beat him up and broke his nose and he let her because all he could think was _thank god I'm with her again_. In the final battle he remembers kissing her and her kissing him and knowing _absolutely knowing_ that he was meant to belong to her. And looking at her now, sitting next to her dead father's hospital bed, Ron remembers getting married one month and six days after the final battle. In St. Mungo's , standing in Neville's hospital room surrounded by the DA and the Order. His mother crying _eighteen and married_ and him thinking _I want the rest of my life with this girl_.

Hermione's remembering her father, the American father that she hasn't seen since she was eleven years old and getting her Hogwarts letter. She remembers all the summers she spent in the back seat of a Chevy impala, wind gusting through hair because the AC was broke. Days upon days of traveling and sightseeing and gas station food and exorcisms. And possessions, and hauntings and creepings and days of thinking to herself _it can't get any better, I've got the best dad and the coolest brothers and we go on the greatest adventures I'm living in an adventure novel. _And every fall when she flew back into her mother's arms her mother laughed and asked if she had fun and Hermione answered _yes_. She remembers a time before Ron and Harry when she was part of a family that was unstoppable. A family of superheroes.

She chooses to not remember the day her letter arrived. July 31st. She chooses to not think about the way her father looked at her when she was done reading the letter out loud. And the way he made her bathe in holy water and eat a spoonful of salt that stung the inside of her mouth and scraped down the back of her throat. She has also purposely forgotten his chanting Latin and his harsh words as he tried to take the witch out of her. The way she screamed _No, Daddy it's me, Hermione_ for hours on end, she has forgotten that also. She will never forget the looks on her brother's faces as they huddle in a corner of the motel room. And she will never forget Minerva McGonagall flying into the room with a fury like she had never seen before and taking her away, back to England within the blink of an eye.

John Winchester's corpse lies before her, and Hermione is trying her best to cry for the loss of him, but really she is crying for the loss of her childhood so many years ago. And she is crying for the family she lost because of his hatred and she is crying for the loss of another family because of another man's hatred. But she is not crying because he is gone. And that's the most important distinction of all.

***AFTER THE WAR***

Ron and Hermione are both by the dead man's bedside when the door of the room opens. She is still sitting in that stupid, uncomfortable plastic chair and he is standing beside her, holding on to her like if he lets go they will both fly away (he holds her like that a lot these days).

Neither of them turn around at the sound of the door, or at the clumping of boots that suddenly stop when their owner realizes that there are people in his father's room. They do however turn round when the boot wearing man speaks. "What the Hell?"

**AN: And this, dear readers is where I leave you. Hope you enjoyed. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Doubts about the legitimacy of Pluto's dethroning? Feel free to review or message. **


	2. Two Brothers

The Winchester brothers have been through a lot by the time the young doctor emerges from their father's room with a defeated slump in his shoulders. Death, demon truckers, reapers, bad hospital coffee. The death of their father, their only living blood, the man who, for years, raised them, fed them, clothed them, protected them. Taught them. And now….

The doctor directs them to a horribly cold waiting room that is completely devoid of any other being and then leaves to find a nurse to take them through hospital procedure. While he is gone the brothers are silent. Dean has just been told something that could end the world. Sam has just read something that makes his heart twist in a way that it hasn't in a long time. Both brothers blame themselves for the silence.

It is not a nurse that finally approaches the boys, but a lawyer. The tired, trying-to-keep-a-hospital-afloat kind of lawyer, the kind that Sam didn't want to be.

"Misters Winchester." She takes a seat across from them and folds her hands tightly over her knees. "As the legal spokesperson for this hospital I would like to offer you our sincerest condolences on the loss of your father, John Winchester. While we deeply regret his death, we would like to make clear that your father's death was in no way the fault of the hospital—"

"Aren't you supposed to have paper work?"

The lawyer is stunned for a moment at his words. "Beg Pardon?"

"Paper work. Things for us to sign so that we can take our dad's body with us and get the heck out of this horrible state."

She blinks owlishly at Dean Winchester and then turns to the younger brother, Sam. "Mister Winchester your father left the hospital very implicit directions as to the disposal of his remains. I am sorry, but we can't release his body to you."

"Implicit directions?" He echoes her, because he can't imagine his father ever telling a hospital to salt and burn his bones.

"Yes, in the form of a letter. I believe your brother got a copy of that letter shortly before your father went into cardiac arrest." Dean turns a suspicious eye to his younger brother who has the decency to look ashamed. "In this letter you father very clearly states that the only person with permission to remove his body or his affects from hospital grounds is a young woman by the name of Hermione Granger, who he calls your half-sister. Now the nursing staff is making attempts to locate and contact your sister. If she has not been contacted at the end of a forty-eight hour period then you may petition for power of attorney—"

Dean stops listening. His heart feels chilled, as if a cold hand had suddenly invaded his chest and wrapped it's fingers through his sinews. Hermione Granger, the littlest Winchester. The baby sister that vanished from a motel room in Arkansas nearly ten years ago. Dean stops himself from remembering the utter fear he felt that day when his ten year old sister announced that she was a witch. He swallows that ever lingering fear that she's dead, killed by her own father. His own father. Swallows it because now he knows that Hermione Granger-once-Winchester is alive. And he is sure that his father wanted him to kill her.

********** After the War**********

Dean may be able to block out the memories, but Sam cannot. He remembers. Everything.

Baby sister. So tiny when they first see her, just a little doll really. At first Sam is not quite sure he likes the idea of a baby sister. He's not quite sure why, but he knows that a million different motel rooms are not the place for a china doll. And then Dad announces that the baby Mia will not be staying with them. She will be going across the ocean to live with her mother. Her mother is still alive, something which surprises five year old Sam. After all shouldn't Mia's mother be dead? His mother is. And Mia is his sister… Dean promises to explain later. Sam isn't sure he wants to know.

The first summer she came to stay with them on her own she was five. Five and instead of blue baby eyes she has eyes the color of whiskey. And her hair is another being, completely separate from her. It follows her like a cloud and that is the summer Sam learns how to braid hair. That summer there are no motels and no monsters and they stay with Bobby and run around the back yard and scream at the top of their lungs just for fun. Dean teaches Mia how to turn a wrench and Sam teaches her how to read. And at the end of the summer Mia cries and begs to stay. But she goes back home and they go back to motels.

She comes for every summer after that. Seven years old and she knows her way around the international airport in London, New York and the regional terminal in South Dakota. Seven years old and full of stories that she's heard about school. _Sam, are they true? Yes. School is amazing_. Dean sits back and scowls until Mia asks him the difference between the engine in a stick shift and the engine in an automatic. And then he teaches her. And everything is happy and monster free.

Until it isn't any more.

Because Bobby has a library and little Mia loves books and she loves to read and she doesn't like the pictures so much. And she reads about things that hide in the dark and things that lick marrow from the spaces in your bones and caress the sinews of your neck with their teeth. She never says anything to the rest of them, but Sam can see her face pinch a little when Dad leaves for a business trip and he watches her creep around the library late at night. She gets really quiet when Bobby asks her to fetch him something, as if she's waiting for something to explode, or fly off the shelf towards her. It's like she's waiting for something to happen, like she's waiting for something deep inside her to break free and destroy everything. Sam sees this because Sam sees everything. And he worries that Mia won't want to come stay with them in the summers if she finds out the family secrets. So he decides to tell her himself, because maybe if _he_ tells her she'll stay.

Mia does not look surprised when Sam tells her about the dark underbelly of reality. She looks quiet, but not surprised. And then she asks him a question. _Is magic evil? _And he says_ Magic? Like what? _And she says _Magic. Like the kind that you read about in story books. _And then Twelve Year Old Sam says something that Grown Up Sam will regret for the rest of his life. He answers like he knows Dean or Dad would answer: _Yes._ The world is black and white. And Magic is evil.

**AN: I loved reading your reviews! They keep me writing! So keep them coming! Anyway… Hope you like where I'm going so far. I the future I will be faster with updates, I promise! **


	3. Find the Witch

The boys make a trade: Sam agrees to take the first shift at the hospital and Dean agrees to be the one to call Bobby and tell him the news, that John Winchester is dead. They have to glare and snap at each other to strike that deal, but really, Sam wants to be the one at the hospital and Dean wants to be the one to call Bobby.

Sam knows that Dean thinks that it will take their half sister days to arrive from England, that whoever sits second shift has a better chance of catching her. But he also has a very clear memory of a severe looking woman in black robes and a pointed hat appearing and disappearing in their motel room all within the blink of an eye and Sam is sure that if Hermione is still alive, she'll travel the same way and that she'll show up as soon as the hospital can get in contact with her. Sam's plan is to be the one waiting.

Dean knows that by taking the second watch at the hospital he's giving up the likelihood of a clear shot at Mia. (He knows this, and it makes him so happy he could cry.) He also knows, however, that putting in the call to Bobby is more important than being the first to catch his witch sister (maybe Sam will screw up and she'll get away or maybe she wont come at all because she knows that it'd be suicide to tangle with the famous Winchester brothers, maybe her demon friends have warned her…) because if he puts in the call to Bobby he knows that Bobby will be on his side when it comes to taking out a witch. Bobby will not hesitate, and that's what Dean needs. So Dean lets Sam be the one to pace the halls of Our Lady of Mercy and drink stale cafeteria coffee and take piss breaks at the risk of missing some important detail and he makes the call. Once Bobby's assured him that he's on the way, and bringing what needs to be brought, Dean takes a shower, changes clothes and finds himself a bar (because really, who needs sleep anyway?). Dean goes to a dive bar and drinks just enough to take the edge off of his father's death and Mia's betrayal and Sammy's constant need to talk about feelings. He sits in the corner, slouching and looking disgusting so that he won't be bothered, and tries not to think about what baby Mia will look like after all these years.

She'll still have the whiskey colored eyes, he knows that. Eyes that are too big for her face, that sometimes make her look like a cat, twitching its tail with curiosity. And the hair. He knows that her hair will stay the same un-tamable mass of curls, its own entity. He tries, but fails entirely, to not do the math: nineteen, close to twenty. Mia the spunky eleven year old has become nineteen, near twenty year old Mia, with no adjectives because he knows nothing about her. He hates that lack of adjectives because he _knew_ eleven year old Mia, knew what she loved and hoped and dreamed for. And now he has no idea what Mia has become. The only adjectives that he can think up are horrible, nasty things. Mia the soulless nineteen year old. Mia the demonic nineteen year old. Mia the lost, Mia the evil, Mia the witch. Mia the nineteen year old that he prays bears no resemblance to his once upon a time baby sister.

Dean orders another drink and attempts to shut down the thoughts. His dad's given him one last job to do, after all.

AFTER THE WAR

Sam has a bad habit of getting easily bored on stakeouts. Normally he drinks a lot of coffee and does Sudoku puzzles; the coffee keeps him awake and the puzzles keep him occupied but take up so little brain space that he can still keep his focus. That strategy works fine when staking out a house, or an abandoned farm, or an Indian burial ground, but for a hospital in the middle of nowhere Missouri he has to improvise.

So instead he just wanders restlessly through the hallway. He's afraid that if he stays in one place he won't see Mia until it's too late, and then he'll have to find her in their father's room and it will be weird. (That's not really true. Really he just feels restless and his mind won't let him concentrate on anything but past mistakes. But he likes to think that there's a purpose to his restlessness.)

For a while he manages to watch the evening news, until the international portion comes up and he sees the human horrors, the kinds that are caused by human monsters doing human things. After that he has to go back to wandering the halls.

Sam usually considers himself to be a great thinker, a wonderer, a brooder, but for the next few hours he steadfastly refuses to think about the one thing burning a hole in his subconscious: the letter from his father. He steadfastly refuses to bring it out and read it again. It makes him too angry. (It makes him too sad). Instead he counts backwards from 100 by sevens and when that his done he starts again from 1,000.

He walks for so long that the gun stashed in the waistband of his jeans no longer feels cold.

AFTER THE WAR

When the time comes for Dean to return to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital he is, regrettably, beginning to sober up. Which is too bad really, because he's spent the last few hours drunkenly fantasizing of being incapable of making it to the hospital safely. He'd be forced to call Sam, tell him that he'd have to stay on watch for a while longer, at least until Bobby got there. At the very least he wouldn't be able to responsibly fire a weapon, and it wouldn't be possible for him to carry out his father's wishes. (What did that letter say, anyway?)

But when he stood up from the barstool he doesn't feel the oh so familiar drunken vertigo and his steps are heavy but surprisingly sure. So he pays his tab and leaves. It takes him three minutes in the parking lot to remember that the beloved Impala isn't waiting for him and another ten minutes for the hospital shuttle to arrive.

All in all, Dean is twenty-three minutes late to the hospital. It isn't enough.

AFTER THE WAR

When Sam was a freshman at Stanford (so long ago the memories might as well be draped in sepia) he was accidentally enrolled in an art appreciation class. He'd been forced to attend exactly one lecture before he was able to drop in favor of Political Questions 101, but during that single hour he learned about happenstance. The professor was lecturing on the pull that disasters had on artists and on photographers in particular. Part of her lecture involved speaking on the fact that most great photographers relied largely on happenstance to capture the perfect moment, the perfect scene of disaster. "Disaster is so compelling," she said, "Disaster compels us as humans to stop, to pay attention. A good photographer is merely in the right place at the right time and waiting to capture the moment of disaster so that later, when he shows his work, people will stop and pay attention. Happenstance." Sam hadn't gotten to hear what that particular professor had to say about nice photographs, photographs of trees and mountains and such, but he did get to bond with the girl sitting next to him. Jessica. And he did get to learn about disaster. And happenstance.

That Sam found himself at the opposite end of the hospital when he should have been meeting Dean in the lobby was happenstance. That Dean wasn't actually in the lobby yet was happenstance. That they both missed the arrival of the one person they were waiting on due to happenstance was a disaster.

When Dean doesn't see Sam in the lobby he decides to go to his Dad's room, where the nurses all assured him his father could stay until his sister arrived to retrieve him. After all, if you're going to lie in wait for your evil half-sister to come to a hospital to retrieve your dead father, wouldn't you wait in said dead father's room, the one place she was guaranteed to show up? He remembers the three lefts and a right that he needs to take in order to get there. He remembers the name of the nurse on call, Grace, and he remembers to ask politely if he can go sit with his father's corpse. When he pushes the door open, however, Dean absolutely forgets anything he ever learned about subtlety or stealth.

"What the hell?"

From two lefts and a right away Sam hears his brother's shout and in the moment before he breaks into a sprint, a line from a book he read to Mia once rolls through his head unbidden. _To the scene of the disaster, Miss Clavelle ran fast and faster. _

When Sam arrives at the room (a hand on the shoulder of Grace the on-call nurse, "I'm sorry about the commotion, let me try to talk to him,") he finds Dean who has obviously found Mia.

"Dean," Sam says, and it is not a question but a command. A muscle in Dean's jaw jumps at the sound.

"Sam," says Dean, with equal amounts of steel.

From through the doorway comes the sound of a plastic chair being scraped across linoleum and it draws the brothers' attention like a magnet.

The girl standing at John Winchester's bedside is short. She is wearing khaki slacks and a black button up sleeveless blouse and her hair is pulled up and out of her face in what appears to be a business-like twist. She is pale and her eyes are too big for her face and her nose is a little too pointy and Sam hazards a guess that if she were to smile she might have buck teeth although he has found that he can't be too sure of anything today. The girl is at once nothing and everything like what he imagined she'd be.

"Sam, Dean." Her voice is soft. She leaves off the hello, or any type of question that one might ask a long lost brother, and instead settles for standing up a little straighter and squaring her shoulders.

"Mia." Sam's not sure which one of them said her name. He suspects it was Dean because his mouth and nose and ears appear to have suddenly filled with cotton. The bottom has dropped out of his stomach. The words of his father's letter are creating black spots across his vision.

From somewhere through the haze he hears a fourth person, an intruder to his own personal heaven and hell. "Why don't we all move inside and shut the door." The suggestion carries a British accent and comes from a red headed stranger that Sam cannot believe he didn't notice until the moment he spoke. _Who was he? _Sam's confusion only grows.

"Excellent idea," he hears Dean say. "C'mon Sammy, let's stop causing a spectacle." And then he is inside the room with his brother and his sister and the red-headed stranger and the door is closed and all Sam can think is one word: _Disaster_.


End file.
